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Do you find yourself behind the lens rather than in front? Are you good at relaxing the nervous and the fidgety? Do you have that unique eye to spot an angle noone has noticed? Ishani Ranasinghe looks into the art of photography
What makes an object beautiful? How can that same object be shown in a different light? How has the camera evolved in the last century, and what impact have these changes had on the world of art? Can a photograph created for business purposes, such as a billboard, ever transcend commerce and become art? If you are a photography enthusiast, you’ll explore such ideas.

Being a photographer can mean different things. Anyone who picks up a camera and clicks the shutter is a photographer of sorts. More seriously, for most of us a photographer is someone who spends a considerable portion of his/her life dabbling in photography. Most of the time people want to know how they can make a career out of something that at the moment is just an interest.

Many of us dream of becoming rich and famous, of having our work shown in great art galleries, splashed across leading fashion magazines and enlarged on the front pages of the newspaper. While it is always a possibility that photography will make us a celebrity, reality tends to be rather mundane.

Photography does however offer many people an interesting and fulfilling way to make a living. Many jobs in photography offer a considerable variety of experiences and the challenge of finding solutions to new problems. Many of those who set out to be photographers, including those who take photography courses, will end up making a living from other skills, but photographers will often continue to photograph and to think of themselves as photographers. Creativity is something we all need, and one way to explore it is through photography.

This field is of course changing and many photography courses reflect this, both by incorporating such areas as video and digital technologies and also in some cases by a change of title, for example to ‘lens-based’ imaging. Although these new technologies have become a vital part of almost any photographer’s toolkit, the still photograph – however produced – has retained its importance. The still image selects an instance from the flow, giving it an importance that is lost when we see twenty five frames a second. So long as good quality still images are needed, photographers will be needed to produce them.

Like most problems, the best way to start thinking about how to become a photographer is to break it down to a number of simpler steps and try to see the answer to them.

The kind of person you need to be:
A visual thinker who loves looking at the world through a viewfinder. If you’re an artist with a techie side, you’ll enjoy working with cameras and in a darkroom.

Some points you might want to consider when thinking about yourself as a photographer are:

Do you like meeting new people and get on well with them?
Are you inquisitive and good at asking questions?
Do you like to travel?
Would you mind working irregular hours that often means you are away from home for days or weeks?
Are you good at explaining your ideas to people?
Would you be good at selling your ideas and your work?
Are you cautious or do you like to take risks?
Can you work carefully and reliably?
Do you cope well under pressure without making mistakes?
Are you quick to see new visual ideas and opportunities?
Do you like to work indoors or outdoors?

Fortunately you don’t need to excel in every area to become a photographer – there are for example areas of work that don’t involve travel or irregular hours, but you need to think carefully about your capabilities. You may also need to consider how any specific traits, conditions, beliefs or likes and dislikes might affect you.

The areas you can get into:
When it comes to photography there are many areas you can get into. Here are a few.
* Editorial photography
* Press and photojour-
nalism
* Fashion photography
* Scientific photography
* Fine Art photography

The courses:
If photographs interest you, you need to contact the Photographic Society of Sri Lanka. They offer a course in photography, which comprises two modules; beginners and intermediates.

As a beginner:
Breaking away from the traditional method of a lecturer just going on endlessly with people hardly paying any attention about the shutter speed and the like, they come out with a new syllabus that is far more interactive. The whole beginner’s course consists of four, three hour lessons and the teaching is very much one on one. Groups are small; about six students per group and each group has a separate lecturer. The course content is based on camera craft and is intended for complete beginners. It includes hands on learning as well as studying the theory of photography.

The intermediate level:
This module is conducted in a more conventional method with the syllabus being based on the City and Guild format. The course teaches more sophisticated skills in the following areas; flash photography, studio lightning, field photography and digital and colour photography.

There are plenty of interesting careers in photography, some glamorous and well paid, but most photographers are self-employed and many find it difficult to make a living. Even if you end up working in a different job, you can still carry on getting enjoyment out of taking pictures, either as a part-time photographer or simply for its own sake.

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